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GFX Tutorials and Resources Hall

50 Great Photoshop Tutorials for Clever Beginners.

Before you can create Photoshop masterworks, you need to learn the basics. Even the most complex digital artworks are built on a foundation of simple actions. These 50 tutorials are aimed at the clever beginner who wants to master Photoshop from the roots.

GFX Tutorials and Resources Hall

How to find matching colors.

When selecting colors for a wallpaper or a sig that you are making, you have to consider whether your color match or not. When finding two or more colors that match, ur picture will appear pleasing to the eye and it's easier to like. If you want to create a sig with a render, you of course need a background. The colors of the background should match the colors of the render or the other way around. The easiest way to this is by finding complementary colors.

basically you pick the color that's on the opposite side of the color u want, or the color of your render. The color on the other side of the wheel will match as a BG. (in this wheel Red will match Cyan blue, bluish tones) The Color on the other side doen't have to be the exact color on the other side, just anything on the other side of the wheel within a small radius. These are called complements. Also u can pick colors using the Triad way, if u want three colors e.g and so on. see image below And where have you seen these colors combined before? :D That's right!

I found this awesome program for just this called ColorShemer Studio
order number: 30056671
serial : CSS2FACB790E7B7D51A2

The colors will appear pleasing to the eye this way.
I have an example that i did here on NB a few days ago where i did just this:
U see how the peach-red matches the green-yellow? see color wheel above

Colormatching is very important when choosing colors for your pic, or else ur stuff will only not fall in taste, and you'll get nowhere.. :p try picturing yourself trying to decide the colors for ur walls in ur house to mach with the colors of ur roof. If ur roof is brown, then u don't want yellow walls, but perhaps something bluish. :p maybe a silly example. But you get the drill. I hope this will help you as well as others when making sigs and wallpapers. :D

GFX Tutorials and Resources Hall

Photoshop Tutorials [for skilled and beginners]

Hello all you GFXers and GFXers in Training. What I've organized here is tutorial Pack with the basic stuff, it's not completed yet, i will be making an edit later on today with the other 8 tutorials I have found, organized and researched.So for now, please use it well, by practicing you'll get the hang of it.

1)open photoshop
2)Click on the brush icon on the left of the screen
3)go to the brush selection list
4)click "more"
5)click Load, a window will pop up, then you select the location of your brush, select the brush, click ok, then scroll down and you see your brushes.

█▓▒░ GFX Tutorials and Resources Hall

Need:
The GIMP
GAP (GIMP animation Package. I'll put up a link soon)
The image you wanna shine
Basic Knowledge of Layers and other GIMP stuff (I'll try and be as detailed as possible)

Important steps are coloured in red for advance users who know what they are doing

Start out by opening up a new GIMP image and paste in your image. I chose an old sig of mine

Make a New Folder and call it GAP (or whatever you wanna call it)

Save your image as background pic_000001.xcf in the new folder that you just created

Now open up a new GIMP image make it the same size as your previous image. Mine is 420 X 140 as my sig was that size.

Delete the default background layer and make a new layer. Okay, now we make our shine effect.

MAKING SHINE EFFECT:

Select the freeform select tool.

Our shine effect is pretty much just a giant bar running from one side to another. So the image we're aiming to make is this

Start from the bottom Left. When you click a dot forms which and you can continue from there.

go up and a bit to the right to make the wire slant. Make it slant as much as you think is right, but not too much

now click to the right

now downwards. try slanting it so it's parallel to the left

and then join the line to the first dot

*Note*
If you make a mistake when making the shine bar selecting undo or pressing CTRL + Z won't work, so you'll have to click on another tool to reset your selection and start again

This makes your selection. Now choose white as your colour, click on the fill tool and fill your selection. It should look like this

now save it as Shine.xcf in your GAP folder

MAKING OUR FRAMES

Open up background pic_000001.xcf. On the menu bar click on Video -> Duplicate frames

Set the "N Times" option to 100. Depending on how wide your image is you might want to add more frames or less, as more frames equals a smoother animation. An avatar would probably be at 50 frames. Click OK. It will take some time to create the frames.

*Note* Now they'll be a bunch of .xcf files in your GAP folder so don't be alarmed O.O

5. Now the X Slider. At the right of it there will buttons to increase or decrease the number, so decrease the number till your bar is just out of sight.

6. Now to the right click add point. Back at the X slider, slide it all the way to the right or till your bar disappears and click add point again

7. At the bottom right there is a button called Anim Preview. Click it.

A dialog box appears.

Check "exact object on frames" and set "Scale Preview" to 100%

The bottom slider is how fast your object (Shine bar) will move. 24fps is a decent speed so keep it at that if you want and click ok

Two new windows will open up. One will be a new GIMP image with all the frames and another will be the animation preview.

*Note* The bar is not supposed to be a solid white. this is just a rushed example

Click the play button to see your animation action. If you're happy with the speed of the animation continue to the next step, if not close both of the new windows and start again from step 7 and change the speed to what you prefer

ALMOST THERE

Close the Preview window and the move path dialog box. Now in your new Untitled image go to Filters -> Animation -> Optimize for GIF

A new window pops up.

In the new window go to Image -> Mode -> Indexed. Set Max colours to 256 and "Colour Dithering" to Floyd Steinberg (reduced colour bleeding)

Now Save it as "Whatever you want".GIF in a different folder. Make sure you click save as animation in the dialog box that appears and you're done

My first tut so I hope you like it. There will definitely be some problems so kindly point 'em out. I'd like to see your results so post 'em if below and if you have any questions post 'em below or PM me

GFX Tutorials and Resources Hall

Graphic Design Dictionary

A list of Graphic Terms used when designing. [/CENTER]

A► Animated GIF - A small animation based on continuous GIF images, giving the impression of movement or action.
► Animation - Generating movement by displaying a series of images using frames.
► Atmo - The atmosphere in a signature / piece of work.
► Artwork - An Artowrk is a slighty different form of a signature. Most of the times it's way bigger, about 800x600.

B► Background - The background is behind all your effects and focal. Its usually blurry so that the focal gets more attention.
► Blending - It's to make the render part/match the background.
► Blurring - The term for adding depth to your image. A tool in photoshop.
► Burn - A term used when darkening areas of the image. A tool in photoshop.
► Brush - A tool in photoshop.

C► CnC- Comment & Critique. It is the feedback a user gives to an artist, you usually point out the pros and cons.
► C4D - Abstract renders created in the program, Cinema 4D. They can be used for effects and lighting in your image.
► Composition - Its how well your image is put together.
► Crop - Used to remove unneeded areas/parts in an image.
► Concept - The main idea behind the image.
► Clipping Mask - It's used to blend renders in a signature or create some effects in the background.
► Collab - Short for Collaboration, it's when two or more people work together on one piece.

D► Depth - Adds distance to your image. Things far away should seem far away and things close by needs to be clear.
► Dodge - Used to brighten parts of the image. A tool in photoshop.

E► Emboss - Gives the image a 3D-like effect.
► Effect - Resources used in the image to make it more appealing. They are usually bright and vibrant but not always.

F► Focal Point - The main focus in your image. In most cases, its the render/stock you chose to work with.
► Fractals - Similar to C4Ds, not 3D though. They are used for effects and lighting in your image.
► Flow - The direction the effects are going towards in an image.
► Font - The tex-tart chosen in your image.

G► GFX - Graphic Effects.
► Gradient Map - A tool in photoshop. It can be used to blend in your render to the background.

H► HQ - High Quality.

L► Lighting - The shadows in the image are controlled by Lighting. Lighting is created by a light source.
► Light Source - The source of the light in an image. The shadows follow the direction of the Light source.
► LQ - Low Quality.
► Layers - They hold single images that are stacked above each other to form one whole image.

M► Messy - If there is too much going on in a Signature and you can barely see anything because of too many effects, it's messy.
► Monotone - This is when your image consists of one color.

O► Outcome - An outcome is what you call the end product of a tutorial.
► Overcontrasted - As the name says, when the contrast is too high in the signature / piece of work.
► Overlightened - When there is too much lighting going on in your signature.
► Oversharpened - Oversharpening, it makes your signature looks bad when everything is too sharp.
► Opacity - The transparency of a layer.

R► Render - A render is what you call a cut out piece of an image with a transparent background.
► Rip - A rip is when a designer claims the work of another person to be his own.

S► Scanlines - Scanlines are pattern or brushes in Photoshop / Gimp (mostly pattern).
► Smudge - The Smudge-Tool is an important part of Photoshop which allows you to smudge images.
► Sprites - Sprites are figures or objects out of very old video games. (EXAMPLE)
► Stock - Is just a regular image, mostly photos.

T► Typo - As in Typography, means the creation of a graphic / text. It is understood as a way to express using text, images, lines, surfaces to make an even more creative text in your piece of work.